Or maybe it was the time my daughter brought home a gift from her
preschool, a book entitled How To Really Love Your Child. (I suspect it
had something to do with her talent for sharing embarrassing stories
about her family.)
Where did I go wrong? I was going to be Super Mum. I played Mozart
to my babies. I knew muffin recipes off by heart. My freezer was full of
healthy baby foods lovingly prepared from the freshest ingredients. My
house was tidy and uncluttered. I read conscientiously to the first
baby, long before she could understand a word I was saying. My bedside
table groaned with the advice of renowned psychologists on best
mothering practices. I obsessed about schools. I agonised over the
psychological damage of every impatient word spoken to my kids. And then
I got real.
There was that first trip to the park on my own, where I spent the
entire time trying to stop my 2-year-old from running headlong into
traffic, while the 3-year-old wandered off looking for strangers to talk
to.
Fresh air, I decided after that, was highly over-rated. As was this whole impossible ideal of the perfect mother.
The other day I heard my favourite radio station promoting a
competition for Super Mums, it being Mothers Day this weekend. Fat
chance, I thought. Someone should tell them they're a little behind the
times. The Super Mum is dead - or at least no longer in vogue.
And not before time. As if motherhood wasn't already fraught with
enough guilt - every time someone goes bad we automatically blame the
mother - Super Mum was making the rest of us mere mortals look bad.
I've glimpsed this impossibly perfect paragon of virtue now and
again, zipping round the suburbs at supersonic speed, ferrying her
charges to soccer and cello lessons and ballet and swimming, in between
running cake stalls for the PTA and finishing her master's thesis, while
at all times looking immaculate and calm. Super Mum never yelled or got
angry.
But I knew a new era had arrived when I read about a few books on
the market. Confessions of a Slacker Mom, by Muffy Mead-Ferro, and The
Three-Martini Playdate, by Christie Mellor, are the revenge of the
imperfect mums.
I've not read either book - I need no instruction on the subject of
mothering sins. It was a relief to discover that this style of
mothering, which I prefer to think of as relaxed rather than lax, wasn't
entirely cultural.
After all, the Pacific Island mum is an icon so well known now that
it's the stuff of comedy. She is unashamedly bossy and controlling,
doesn't believe that her child should be her friend, is fiercely
protective, and yet won't hesitate to embarrass her kids (yes, she will
kiss you, or tell you off, in front of your friends, be the loudest mum
at netball and hockey, and stare down any other child who dares to pick
on you).
My kids are familiar with all this, having learned long ago that
being mean is part of my job description, that I don't care what all the
other mothers are doing, and that when all else fails, I resort to the
argument on my fridge magnet: "Because I'm the mother, that's why."
Endless patience and self-sacrifice are all very well, but too much
of it and you end up with kids who have an unhealthy sense of
entitlement, and a tendency to treat their mother as their own personal
doormat.
In fact, the under-mothering promoted by Mellor and Mead-Ferro -
the latter's mothering style boils down to telling her kids to "go
outside and play" - may actually be better for kids, encouraging
independence and creativity.
Relaxed mothers know that amazingly, and despite our manifold
imperfections, children turn out to be resilient, forgiving creatures
(they can't help themselves). Most of them tend to survive their
childhood experiences without being scarred for life.
A friend of mine, who underwent years of therapy, tells me that her
mum recently admitted she wasn't cut out to be a mother. Much as my
friend loves her, she's not sure how she's supposed to react when
hearing her mother tell people to get a pet - it's so much easier.
But she survived, as did the sons of a colleague who confessed
that, not being a morning person, she used to strap her toddlers into
their high-chairs, with their cereal, and disappear back to bed for a
snooze.
My elder son, too, will survive the fact that I've missed two of
his birthdays (once he forgets), and my younger son will eventually get
over the fact that not long ago, when he came to tell me his height
measurement, I looked so shocked that he said, "What? Too short for
you?"
And thankfully, my daughter has already deleted from her memory
banks the time I burst out laughing when, at age 5 or 6, she tearfully
accused me of caring only for my sons.
(For the record, in case they read this, my son is not a midget,
especially when it comes to his sense of humour, and I love all my
children equally, though I've not always treated them the same.)
I suspect they'll turn out fine, despite their mother's lapses.
Which is not to say you can't take bad mothering too far.
Google in "mother" and you're just as likely to get stories of
mothers abusing and murdering their children, or selling them for the
price of a bottle of vodka, as one Russian mother did recently, as you
will stories about Marge Simpson - voted Britain's most respected mother
last year.
A spokeswoman for Mothers Union, which ran the poll, explained that
Marge was a more real mum than her rivals (Cherie Blair, Victoria
Beckham and Elizabeth Hurley), who live lives so different from ordinary
people.
Which brings me back to Mothers Day - and a bit of a tip on what
mothers really want. Yes, perfume, chocolates and flowers are all very
nice. Even breakfast in bed delivered after she's already been up for
hours, and requiring a big clean-up afterwards (by guess who?).
But what a mother really wants is time away from those she loves
most. Call it mother's annual leave, a growing trend among some of my
friends and relatives, who hole up once a year, alone or with other
like-minded mothers, somewhere removed from the demands of motherhood -
if only to remember what life was like BC (Before Children). And to talk
about their children.
by Tapu Misa
